Editing Harry Pollitt (section)

===Pre-World War II and the Great Purge===
In 1929 the CPGB elected Pollitt General Secretary with Joseph Stalin's personal approval. Pollitt replaced [[Albert Inkpin]], who had attracted disapproval from the Comintern by opposing the "Class-against-Class" policy and perceived softness towards others on the left.<ref name="Treacy 36">{{cite book |last1=Treacy |first1=Matt |title=The Communist Party of Ireland 1921 - 2011 |date=2012 |publisher=Brocaire Books |isbn=9781291093186 |page=36 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DpT2AwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Harry+Pollitt%22+%22Albert+Inkpin%22&pg=PA36 |access-date=20 October 2021}}</ref> On his appointment, Stalin told him, "You have taken a difficult job on, but I believe you will tackle it all right".<ref name="McIlroy 189">{{cite journal |last1=McIlroy |first1=John |title=The Establishment of Intellectual Orthodoxy and the Stalinization of British Communism 1928-1933 |journal=Past & Present |date=August 2006 |issue=192 |page=189 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4125202 |access-date=23 March 2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press |jstor=4125202 |archive-date=12 June 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210612102503/https://www.jstor.org/stable/4125202 |url-status=live }}</ref> Pollitt was selected as he had impressed people both within the CPGB and in Moscow as a Comintern loyalist and effective organiser, particularly when representing the Comintern at a meeting of the [[Communist Party USA]] in March 1929.<ref name="Thorpe 144-145" /> Pollitt stated that he saw his role as defending the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] (CPSU) "through thick and thin".<ref name="Durham 214">{{cite journal |last1=Durham |first1=Martin |title=British Revolutionaries and the Suppression of the Left in Lenin's Russia, 1918-1924 |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |date=April 1985 |volume=20 |issue=2 |pages=214–215 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/260531 |access-date=23 March 2021 |publisher=Sage Publications, Inc.|doi=10.1177/002200948502000201 |jstor=260531 |s2cid=159699014 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> Unlike Inkpin, Pollitt was willing to criticise the Labour party as "social-fascists".<ref name="Treacy 36" />
[[File:Rose Cohen_IMG_0437_1024.jpg|thumb|right|Rose Cohen, a CPGB member and friend of Pollitt, executed during the Great Purge]]
Pollitt made clear in his public statements his loyalties to the Soviet Union and to CPSU [[General Secretary]] Joseph Stalin. He was a defender of the [[Moscow Trials]], in which Stalin murdered or otherwise disposed of his political and military opponents. In the ''[[Morning Star (UK newspaper)#The Daily Worker (1930–1966)|Daily Worker]]'' of 12 March 1938 Pollitt told the world that "the trials in Moscow represent a new triumph in the history of progress". The article was illustrated by a photograph of Stalin with [[Nikolai Yezhov]], whose likeness would be retouched out of the photograph following his 1940 fall from favour and subsequent execution.<ref>Redman, Joseph "The British Stalinists and the Moscow Trials", ''Labour Review'', 3:2, March–April 1958</ref>

In 1934 Pollitt and [[Tom Mann]], then-treasurer of the [[National Unemployed Workers' Movement]] (NUWM), were [[summons]]ed on charges of sedition in relation to speeches they gave in [[Trealaw]] and [[Ferndale, Wales|Ferndale]] in Wales. Pollitt and Mann were both acquitted of all charges by [[Swansea]] assizes.<ref>{{cite news |title=SEDITIOUS- SPEECH CHARGES MANN AND POLLITT ACQUITTED |url=https://www.thetimes.com/tto/archive/article/1934-07-05/11/13.html |access-date=2 December 2021 |work=The Times |date=5 July 1934}}</ref> The arrests took place on the eve of a meeting in Bermondsey which Mann and Pollitt were due to attend that was to be the culmination of the 1934 Hunger March.<ref name="Hutt 253">{{cite book |last1=Hutt |first1=Allen |title=The Post-war History Of The British Working Class |date=1937 |publisher=Victor Gollancz |page=253 |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.1251/page/n253/mode/2up?q=%22Swansea+Assizes%22 |access-date=2 December 2021}}</ref>

Pollitt travelled again to Moscow in 1935. Whilst there he was invited to make a broadcast on the [[BBC radio]] programme ''The Citizen and His Government'', commenting on the difference between the UK and the USSR. However, the invitation was withdrawn after opposition from the Foreign Office. He would not appear on BBC radio until the [[1945 general election (UK)|1945 election]].<ref name="Harker 81">{{cite journal |last1=Harker |first1=Ben |title=The Trumpet of the Night': Interwar Communists on BBC Radio |journal=History Workshop Journal |date=Spring 2013 |volume=75 |issue=75 |pages=81–100 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43299047 |access-date=23 March 2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/hwj/dbs035 |jstor=43299047 |url-access=subscription }}</ref>

When Pollitt's personal friend [[Rose Cohen (communist)|Rose Cohen]], to whom he had proposed marriage on a number of occasions,<ref name="Thorpe 615">{{cite journal |last1=Thorpe |first1=Andrew |title=Stalinism and British Politics |journal=History |date=October 1998 |volume=83 |issue=272 |page=615 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24424503 |access-date=23 March 2021 |publisher=Wiley|doi=10.1111/1468-229X.00089 |jstor=24424503 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> was put on trial in Moscow in 1937 during Stalin's [[Great Purge]], the CPGB opposed efforts by the British government to get Cohen released, describing her arrest as an internal affair of the Soviet Union. Pollitt privately tried to intervene on her behalf, but by the time he did so she had already been shot.<ref name="Newsinger 39">{{cite book |last1=Newsinger |first1=John |title=Hope Lies in the Proles: George Orwell and the Left |date=2018 |page=39 |doi=10.2307/j.ctt21kk1wk.7 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt21kk1wk.6 |access-date=23 March 2021 |publisher=Pluto Press |jstor=j.ctt21kk1wk.6 |archive-date=27 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210927094445/https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt21kk1wk.6 |url-status=live }}</ref> Pollitt placed himself at risk by questioning Cohen's arrest in this fashion, as [[Béla Kun]] had, under torture, identified him as a "Trotskyist" and "British spy", though [[Osip Piatnitsky]] had refused to confirm these accusations when arrested by the [[NKVD]] in 1937.<ref name="Newsinger 564-565">{{cite journal |last1=Newsinger |first1=John |title=Review: Recent Controversies in the History of British Communism |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |date=July 2006 |volume=41 |issue=3 |pages=564–565 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30036403 |publisher=Sage Publications, Inc. |doi=10.1177/0022009406064670 |jstor=30036403 |s2cid=154979764 |access-date=15 September 2021 |archive-date=15 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210915143338/https://www.jstor.org/stable/30036403 |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref> Twenty years after Cohen's death, Pollitt requested information from Moscow about whether she was still alive, stating, untruthfully, that there was press interest in Britain about her whereabouts.<ref name="Newsinger 149">{{cite book |last1=Newsinger |first1=John |title=Hope Lies in the Proles: George Orwell and the Left |date=2018 |page=149 |doi=10.2307/j.ctt21kk1wk.7 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt21kk1wk.6 |access-date=23 March 2021 |publisher=Pluto Press |jstor=j.ctt21kk1wk.6 |archive-date=27 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210927094445/https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt21kk1wk.6 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In contrast to Pollitt's concern over Rose Cohen, when CPGB member [[Freda Utley]] tried to get Pollitt to intercede with Moscow on behalf of her Russian husband, who was arrested and died in a labour camp in 1938, Pollitt refused.<ref name="Newsinger 564-565" /> Pollitt also failed to intervene to help George Fles and his wife, Arcadi Berdichevsky and his wife, nor a number of other British communists who were arrested by the NKVD and tortured, shot, or imprisoned in the [[Gulag]] during Stalin's purge.<ref name="Beckett 66">{{cite book |last1=Beckett |first1=Francis |title=Stalin's British victims |date=2004 |publisher=Frank Cass |isbn=9780750932233 |page=66 |url=https://archive.org/details/stalinsbritishvi0000beck/page/66/mode/2up?q=%22Pollitt%22 |access-date=16 September 2021}}</ref>

Pollitt defied Moscow by opposing the introduction of [[Conscription in the United Kingdom|conscription in Britain]] when it was introduced in 1939.<ref name="Morgan 239">{{cite journal |last1=Morgan |first1=Kevin |title=Militarism and Anti-Militarism: Socialists, Communists and Conscription in France and Britain 1900-1940 |journal=Past & Present |date=February 2009 |issue=22 |page=239 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25580923 |access-date=23 March 2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press|jstor=25580923 }}</ref> Pollitt's opposition to conscription led to protests from the [[French Communist Party]], which had supported conscription in France.<ref name="Morgan 104">{{cite book |last1=Morgan |first1=Kevin |title=Harry Pollitt |date=1994 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=9780719032479 |page=104 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gi3oAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22Conscription%22+%22Pollitt%22&pg=PA104 |access-date=26 September 2021}}</ref>